Voicing out

Graphics

Jason Brown's college experience has been marked by two distinct, and conflicting, realities.

The 24-year-old political science major has attended Biola University in La Mirada, an evangelical Christian college where students are offered daily chapel services and instructed by school regulations “to follow the teachings of scripture.”

And Brown is gay.

Like most gay students on campus, Brown kept his sexual orientation secret for years. Biola prohibits sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage.

The secrecy ended May 15, when Brown and 14 other students went public as members of the Biola Queer Underground, an unsanctioned student group whose 40 members proclaim a variety of sexual identities, including gay, straight and transgender.

The group, which formed last year, published names and photographs of gay members in an online yearbook titled “Coming Out.” In the fall, the group plans to stage rallies and other events urging Biola to change its stance on sexuality and its treatment of gay students.

“I believe God is love, and the Christian scriptures support that,” said Brown, who graduated in May but will remain at Biola in the fall taking additional classes to prepare for graduate school. “We want to expand out and celebrate our sexuality in the next year.”

Groups like the Biola Queer Underground have begun forming at Christian colleges around the country. College students, a demographic that's more likely than any other age group to express support for gays, are pressing administrators to revise longstanding policies and address what gay students describe as a climate of fear and shame on Christian campuses.

Groups like Biola's have formed at virtually every evangelical college in Southern California, including Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Soulforce, a national advocacy group founded 15 years ago by a gay evangelical pastor, sends representatives to the 118 member colleges of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, an association of the nation's most respected evangelical schools.

The group's aim, said Executive Director Cindi Love, is to “create a new environment” for gay students at Christian schools.

“Students come to find us and say, ‘I was thinking about killing myself until y'all came,' ” said Love, an ordained minister from Abilene, Texas, who attended Abilene Christian University.

Abilene Christian now has a gay student group that last year published an online magazine addressed “to all who know or have known the inner darkness of the closet.”

Gay students are often asked by nonreligious peers why they don't simply leave evangelical colleges.

Many students don't like their options. Some say their parents will only pay for Christian schooling. Others risk being abandoned by their families if they're open about their sexuality.

Brown, co-leader of the Biola Queer Underground, said his family prohibited him from returning home after graduation because he's gay.

“I was homeless,” Brown said. “I bounced around on some friends' couches. (Right now) I'm living at a friend's house in Chino.”

The sudden appearance of organized gay students on Christian campuses has caught administrators off guard, with many struggling to balance traditional biblical teachings with a desire to care for students.

“This is a continual conversation we are having – How do we engage this thoughtfully?” said Danny Paschall, Biola's dean of students. “How do we not come across in a way that feels hateful and ignorant? That's a little bit of a dance.”

Brown and other members of the Biola Queer Underground said gay students at Biola fear being expelled, ostracized or sent for reparative therapy if they express their sexuality openly.

Natasha Magness, a gay co-founder of the Queer Underground, said she was terrified when a sociology professor last year looked her in the eye during class and said, “Some people here are probably secretly a lesbian, and they weaseled their way into the school. They have a secret life, a double life. One moment they're holding hands with their girlfriend, and the next they're in chapel.”

“I cried after the course and started hyperventilating,” recalled Magness, who has since transferred to Scripps College, a nonreligious liberal arts school in Claremont.

Magness remains active with the Queer Underground. This year she was awarded a $10,000 grant from a private foundation, which she plans to use to further the group's work.

“I know three (Biola) students who have been forced to meet with a Biola official … because someone turned them in about their sexuality,” Magness said. “One person had to say or sign something saying she wouldn't have a relationship with her girlfriend anymore.”

At a school-sponsored panel on sexuality in September, Erik Thoennes, chair of Biola's biblical studies department, told students that homosexuality is a “sin” akin to racism.

“There is no other sin I know of that has parades celebrating it and days at Disneyland,” said Thoennes, in a recording of the panel discussion posted online. “Can you imagine having Dishonesty Day at Disneyland?”

Paschall, Biola's dean of students, said no Biola student has been expelled solely because of sexual orientation. Paschall did recall “a particular student” asked to leave the school for a combination of reasons, “and this (sexuality) was one of them.”

Asked if an openly gay student could remain at Biola without refraining from same-sex relationships, Paschall said, “No, they couldn't.”

Paschall said that, speaking for himself and not the university, “I'm a growing person. I want to learn and understand and I don't know all the answers.”

Paschall said he's friends with “a number of gay (Biola) alumni,” including two alumni currently “in (same-sex) relationships … They're not strugglers with this issue.”

In May, Paschall said, he invited three gay Biola alumni to address an audience of school faculty and staff about “what it was like to be at Biola.”

“We're committed to come alongside students who struggle with same-sex issues,” Paschall said. “Our goal is to come alongside and connect with them and support them.”

Debate over sexuality at Christian colleges is especially fierce because many students and faculty are highly versed in the biblical evidence marshaled by supporters and opponents of same-sex relationships.

The debate is often portrayed as a straightforward contest between traditional teachings and modern innovations. But the issue is highly complex.

For example, the creation story at the Bible's beginning says that men and women join together to become “one flesh,” a passage conservatives interpret as a foundational affirmation of one-man, one-woman marriage.

Yet, prominent figures in the Old Testament, including the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, were polygamists or had sex with a slave when a wife was unable to conceive a child.

Several of the Greek words St. Paul uses to condemn homosexuality are unclear or appear nowhere outside the Bible, leaving translators to guess at their meaning based on context.

Jesus himself never mentions homosexuality and only addresses the issue of marriage in response to a question about divorce. Jesus explicitly forbids divorce except in cases of adultery, a prohibition Christians ignore at roughly the same rate as non-Christians.

Caught in the middle of this debate are students like Biola's Jason Brown, who was raised in Chino Hills and knew “from a very young age” that he was gay.

Brown was forced to come out to his family at age 15 when a pastor's wife at his church told his parents he'd been seen at school dating a boy.

“My mom forbade me from seeing him or being friends with him,” Brown said.

Brown was accepted to UC Berkeley but chose to attend Biola because he wanted “to explore my Christianity … I understood it would be conservative but I didn't realize it would be so alienating.”

Brown said he kept his sexual orientation secret during his first two years at Biola. At times, he said, he contemplated suicide.

When he found out about the Queer Underground he joined immediately, attending the group's weekly gatherings at an off-campus nonprofit organization sympathetic to gay causes.

The group, he said, helped him come to terms with his sexuality. It also gave him a new calling: Helping students like himself. He intends to become a human-rights lawyer or activist.

“I call myself a queer Christian who believes that God is love,” Brown said. “I believe that God supports my sexuality. I believe he affirms it and he blesses it and gave it to me as a gift.”

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.